BAE's camera is just a little more sophisticated than your run-of-the-mill surveillance camera.

Currently, UAVs like the Predator drone are limited by grainy, low-resolution cameras with a fairly narrow field of view, especially when they are acquiring targets. The latest drone surveillance system, however, can produce 1.8-gigapixel video with such fine detail that it can track the all the activity in a “medium-size” city.

Um...the reality of how good this next generation of cameras is is both scary and really cool at the same time.

According to the researchers ARGUS can survey a 15 square-mile area while spotting objects as small as six inches around from heights of 17,500 feet. On top of recording 1 million terabytes of footage a day (!), ARGUS monitors the activity down below by tracking every person and car in its field of view.

DARPA/BAE Systems

We don't know if ARGUS-IS is deployed in the field right now— there's a lot of classified information about the system, as you might expect. What we do know is that an all-seeing eye like Sauron or Odin actually exists today, and it works for the government. Just don’t look up.

You can find out more about the ARGUS-IS and other drones in in the full episode of the PBS Nova special "Rise of the Drones.”